My work explores the beauty of self-discovery and celebrates the hopeful spirit and the journey many of us take to find ourselves and learn things along the way. When we were young, we had a sense of adventure, boundless energy, and imagination that could create the most wondrous things. As we grow, we experience many tribulations of life, and those influences can cause those glorious attributes to dwindle.

 Abigail LaCroix’s paintings occupy a realm where magic and meditation coexist in playful harmony. Familiar forms are abstracted and the boundaries of light, pleasure, and ornamentation are explored without searching for answers. LaCroix’s compositions are reminiscent of landscapes and stained glass, emitting a quiet vibration through the dynamics of color and layers of transparency. Luminous portals are crafted that oscillate between spiritual and sensual, playing with the idea of touch (or the absence of it).

 My practice explores history both real and imagined. I use geographically and historically relevant materials to explore the relationship between place, culture, and storytelling. I am deeply interested in the connections between diverse cultures and disparate times; specifically, the intersection between East and West and how the legacies of early modernity continue to shape contemporary American society.

 In my series, Finding the Light, painting is a time-based medium. It is a strategy of searching for meaning and hope in the rituals and memories of my daily life. Through the practice of painting, I examine and maintain connections to my chosen family even when space and time keep us apart.

 My work interrogates the role Western media plays in constructing cultural narratives, while centering a caring and concerning lens on the destruction of Syria and its people through large-scale paintings. The works start from a personal place. Iraq is my father’s country and Syria is my mother’s, as well as the second home of my youth. It is where my aunts, uncles, and cousins were living. It is where there are buildings I slept in and streets where I played tag and other games as a child.

 I am a Black trans-femme artist whose practice explores identity, kinship, and resilience through painting, installation, and multimedia storytelling. My work is rooted in the lived realities of trans-femmes of color—those navigating love, trauma, beauty, and survival in a world that often refuses to see us fully. I use figurative imagery, symbolic landscapes, and textured materials to hold space for stories that are often erased or flattened. Central to my practice is the vision of a trans utopia—a space where joy, serenity, and resistance coexist.

 As a landscape artist, I seek places in the environment where I can submerge myself in the sensory experiences of those places: listening, seeing, smelling, and feeling the inherent qualities of the landscape. Then, I analyze and deconstruct the sensations and curated elements from those places to present them as reorganized impressions of atmospheric abstractions of light, space, and place.

 My portraits aim to be comprehensive representations of a singular character through the use of visual multiplicity. My process employs digital and physical processes as I utilize images from fashion lookbooks to create compositions in Photoshop, then render them in oil paint to depict the complexities of each subject.

 I am an interdisciplinary artist working with materials and processes that reflect my cultural heritage and personal experiences. Born in Mexico and raised in Southern California, my work draws from the traditional crafts of indigenous peoples in Mexico and the labor of immigrant communities. Currently, I weave pipe cleaners and paint with encaustic wax, exploring themes of labor as currency and the inherent value in everyday materials.

 My work examines historical and biographical subject matter. Researching history helps to anchor my work in nonfiction and often provides stories that are more interesting than fiction. There is a long tradition of narrative painting, and I would like to think that I add my own unique approach to that tradition.